Tag Archives: indie

Publishing, News & Contests

My indie author resources

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indie resources blog festToday is the Indie Author Resources Blog Fest! I’m sharing my best indie author resources—and this Thursday, I’ll also premiere a self-publishing nuts-and-bolts column at Janice Hardy’s blog, The Other Side of the Story!

I’m a planner. I tried to go about doing everything the exact perfect way, and I spent six month seriously working on the run-up before I published my first book—after it was written and polished and prettified.

The legal stuff: setting up your publishing company

I am not a lawyer! This is not legal advice! This is the process I followed.

  • File for a Doing Business As (DBA) with the state to create a sole proprietorship
  • File for a federal EIN with the IRS
  • File for a state tax number
  • File for a city/county business license

When using your FEIN with a DBA, remember that you need to use your name, not your DBA’s. This gave me a bunch of problems with signing up with Nook Press, until I called the IRS and asked. (I heard a rumor that they actually want to make sure you do your taxes right, so they answer questions. Gasp. Same with the state tax commission. They’ve answered my questions that would seem extremely stupid to anyone who’d done this before.)

I bought my ISBNs direct from Bowker. Since my publishing plan (and my writing file!) already includes more than 10 ISBNs (one print and one digital per book), I bought a block of 100.

The writing

I’ve had the privilege of working with some great editors. Angela Eschler and Heidi Brockbank edited I, Spy, while Jenn Wilks came through with fantastic rush jobs on Mr. Nice Spy and Spy for a Spy.

Of course, I have to give major credit to my critique partners, Emily Gray Clawson and Julie Coulter Bellon. They are basically my content and structural editors, and they are phenomenal. But they’re not for hire, sorry.

The pretty stuff: design, layout & formatting

You know how they say you can have a job done good, fast and cheap—just pick two?

They’re wrong. Steven Novak, my cover designer, is talented, fast, and very reasonably priced! He is the reason I wanted to do this blog fest, and I cannot recommend him highly enough (and I’m ecstatic to be sharing more of his work this week!!). With my first cover, I had so many revisions even I wasn’t sure what I wanted anymore, but Steven put up with all of my changes. As soon as I nailed down my vision, he nailed the perfect image, and I fell in love with my first cover.

DIY Queen: everything else I did myself

I put the indie in indie author. I really like to go my own way, so I did a lot of the work myself. By hand. So instead of sharing service providers, I’m sharing links on how I learned these skills.

I did my own ebook formatting. To format an ebook from scratch, if you have knowledge of DOS, HTML and CSS, the tutorial at BB eBooks is excellent. It took me a couple days to learn everything and create the necessary files, but I can use that book as a template. I made the images for the book interior in a free image editor, Paint.NET, except, of course, my author portraits, which were taken by award-winning photographer Jaren Wilkey.

I also did my own print interior layout. I learned many principles of interior book design and book typography from The Book Designer blog written by Joel Friedlander. His guides to book design were indispensable. He also offers affordable print book templates for Word, but I finalized my design a couple weeks before he premiered them, dang it. For finding free commercially licensed fonts, I recommend FontSquirrel.

I’ve used CreateSpace and Alexanders for printing my book. Brigham Distributing is my distributor.

(My books are a labor of love. I’m not getting into the business of formatting print or e-books, and although I love you dearly, I won’t do it for you.)

Come share your indie author resources today!

Original Yellow Pages photo by Phossil via Flickr/CC

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Publishing

The hardest part of self-publishing?

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Lots of challenges litter the path of indie publishing. Editing, cover design, formatting, interior design, marketing & promotion, building your own validation, bad reviews, confidence, sales numbers—there are pitfalls every step of the way.

the Book of ChangesAll those things have been hurdles for me over the last month. But the hardest part of self-publishing for me is often leaving it alone.

I think it’s good and even right to fix minor issues like typos, perhaps even inadvertent, minor inconsistencies. But anything more than that, and you run the risk of the slippery slope of perpetual editing.

Author Ally Carter (one of my faves!) said it well in a recent Q&A:

Do you ever re-read your own books?

Not if I can help it. That sounds like my definition of torture—reading something I can’t fix if and when I find mistakes or things I just want to change. And, believe me, I would want to change things. All the things!

Ally is trade published, so she most likely doesn’t have the opportunity to change her works. Can you imagine the torture if you can change things? And if you can, should you?

In the new publishing paradigm, there might not be such a thing as a “finished” book. We can edit forever. And while, again, fixing typos is good, having 8 (or 800) various editions of your book out there just feels wrong. I think there has to be a point where we decide our books are truly polished enough—not to give up too soon and call it good, but to recognize that we’ve produced a finished product to the best of our (and all our helpers’) ability, and share it with readers without shame.

What do you think? How much are you willing to change once you’ve hit “Publish”?

Photo by Nikki L.

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Reading

TBR Tuesday: INDIEpendence Day Blogfest

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Happy INDIEpendence Day!

The book

I thought and thought about what indie published book I could highlight today, and finally I remembered ones that I just recently got during their free promotions. I heard about them direct from the author, Dene Low, who happened to teach the one creative writing class I took in college. Years later, I ran into her at a writers’ conference and looked up her books.

When she mentioned these freebies on Twitter, I snapped them right up! They’re regularly $3.99 on Kindle, so even full price, they’re a bargain!

Crimson Blues Write Like Your Brain Works
Thirty-year-old lawyer Amanda Taylor moves to a small town after winning a sensational criminal case that got national attention. She’s tired of criminal law and just wants to settle into private practice in a place that will allow her to recoup her energies and her belief in human beings. However, although she loves her new home, after she meets her handsome neighbor, Kevin Blakely, she realizes that something isn’t right in the town. Kevin has been brought in from another state to be the new county school district supervisor. He thinks it’s so he can bring the school district into the technological age, but he becomes suspicious when the district budget doesn’t add up and certain members of the school board, who had welcomed him with open arms, begin to distance themselves from him. When he realizes he has been set up to be the scapegoat in a case of fraud and embezzlement, he goes to the only lawyer who isn’t part of the good old boy network in town—Amanda. As the case becomes more complicated, so do Amanda’s and Kevin’s feelings for each other. Learn how to write more easily, more creatively, and more effectively by taking advantage of the way your brain is hardwired to use language. You can write thousands of words a day by using this system and knowing the strategies that will appeal most effectively to your readers. You can learn how to revise easily and with purpose. I’ve done the research so you can have access to my knowledge and thirty years of experience without having to go through all of the work I did. By using my writing system, you can be more productive and inventive and strategic as you write.

I’ve previously read Dene’s trade published MG novel, Petronella Saves Nearly Everyone: The Entomological Tales of Augustus T. Percival. It was nominated for an Edgar Award (I can hardly believe someone I sort-of know was nominated for an Edgar!), and it’s absolutely adorable! It also happens to be $3.99 on Kindle. I’m really looking forward to both of Dene’s books on my electronic TBR!

The Giveaway!

I’m giving away your choice of one copy of Dene Low’s Kindle e-books! You must leave a comment on this blog post AND fill out the Rafflecopter below to enter, and additional entries are available through the Rafflecopter!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

You may enter through July 8th; winner will be announced here July 9th & contacted via e-mail.

Join the blogfest!

Want to join in the INDIEpendence Day blogfest? Here’s how it works:

  1. PICK A BOOK: Pick an indie (self-published or small press) book that you either HAVE READ AND LOVED or WANT TO READ.
  2. WRITE A POST: On INDIEpendence day (July 2nd), write a post about that book. It can be a review, an interview with the author, or simply a post highlighting the book. In your post, be sure to include: 1) HOW you found out about the book and 2) WHY you liked it (or WHY you want to read it). Make it easy for people to sample your indie author by providing buy links as well.
  3. DO A GIVEAWAY (optional): You can give away swag, or a copy of the indie book you’re highlighting, or don’t do a giveaway at all – it’s up to you!
  4. IMPORTANT: you may NOT highlight your own novel or one of the Indelible’s novels (this is a Pay It Forward event!)
  5. GO TO GOODREADS (optional): Add the Indie book or books you’re featuring to our ever-growing INDIEpendence Day List.

Which of Dene’s books would you pick? What indie published books are on your TBR??

Is your writing any good? Join my writers' email group to find out how you can get a free edit & skill assessment!

 
News & Contests

INDIEpendence Day!

I love to support independent publishers—self-published or small press—and my friends in the Indelibles, so you know I’ll be participating in the INDIEpendence Day Blogfest next week!

Want to join? Here’s how:

  1. PICK A BOOK: Pick an indie (self-published or small press) book that you either HAVE READ AND LOVED or WANT TO READ.
  2. WRITE A POST: On INDIEpendence day (July 2nd), write a post about that book. It can be a review, an interview with the author, or simply a post highlighting the book. In your post, be sure to include: 1) HOW you found out about the book and 2) WHY you liked it (or WHY you want to read it). Make it easy for people to sample your indie author by providing buy links as well.
  3. DO A GIVEAWAY (optional): You can give away swag, or a copy of the indie book you’re highlighting, or don’t do a giveaway at all – it’s up to you!
  4. IMPORTANT: you may NOT highlight your own novel or one of the Indelible’s novels (this is a Pay It Forward event!)
  5. GO TO GOODREADS (optional): Add the Indie book or books you’re featuring to our ever-growing INDIEpendence Day List.

For extra incentive, the Indelibles will be giving away a $10 Kindle gift card (to be used on Indie books!) to a random host from the participating blogs!

(Also, if anybody wanted to highlight I, Spy, I wouldn’t say no. Just sayin’ 😉 .)

Are you down for INDIEpendence Day?

Is your writing any good? Join my writers' email group to find out how you can get a free edit & skill assessment!